Financial transactions (sometimes referred to herein as a directed events) can often involve a complex series of underlying steps including additional transactions (sometimes referred to herein as secondary events). For example, a directed event such as a simple request for an advance of $100,000 against an existing revolving credit facility may be followed by a series of calculations, credit facility balance inquiries, credit facility status inquiries, underlying investment analyses, creation of additional transaction requests, cash movements (via a bank wire, for example), and a number of authorizations and approvals throughout the process. Directed events and secondary events can often involve multiple accounts (operated by one or more financial institutions) held by multiple entities that interact with one another to effectuate the directed event. Further, certain steps that need to occur before, or after, a given directed event may be accomplished are often interrelated or interdependent based on, for example, timing, business relationships, funding conditions, business interests, entity preferences, approvals, and funding facility details, among other criteria. Current processes for handling and executing financial transactions require significant human involvement, often at or between each step along the process, leaving such processes vulnerable to human error and fraudulent activity.
In the example above, if an organization makes a request for a $100,000 draw on a revolving credit facility (a directed event involving a transaction where a lender and a borrower, each parties to the directed event, exchange $100,000 in cash for $100,000 in debt obligation according to the terms of a loan agreement), the current processes for handling such a request may involve a loan administrator assessing whether there are adequate funds in (or accessible to) the facility to satisfy the request (i.e., to determine whether the request is acceptable or within the limits of their business arrangement), followed by the loan administrator submitting a request seeking approval from a business approver (e.g., a CFO, a supervising officer, etc.).
Once the business approver approves the request (and consequently the directed event), an operations associate then must determine whether and which secondary events (e.g., additional transactions) are necessary to support (e.g., to provide funding for) the directed event. This may include identifying additional entities associated, directly or indirectly, with the parties to the directed event, determining the means (or event types) of funding the directed and/or secondary events, which may be via one or more debt instruments, equity instruments, or other instruments; and determining the amounts and sequences for each of the secondary events leading up to the directed event. Once determined, and with the underlying support of the business approver's approval, the operations associate then may need to prepare a wire package (a collection of anticipated wires, sometimes referred to herein as a wire batch) including one or more paper wires and/or electronic wires which, if executed, will effectuate the secondary events needed to accomplish the directed event, and may present the wire package for approval by a controller (via electronic approval over an online portal for the electronic wires, or via signature paper for paper wires). The controller may need to perform an audit or evaluation to ensure that the operations associate created the appropriate secondary events with the correct amounts, in the correct sequence, and that any and all other parameters relevant to the business relationship are accounted for as designed. Once approved, the operations associate must instruct execution of the payments in the approved amounts according to the approved sequence, which may involve checking that each payment has been executed by the bank before instructing the subsequent payment.
The foregoing is just one example of various steps that may occur in current practice. More complex transactions may involve far greater number of human interactions, approvals, and execution steps. Each step that involves human interaction or human input represents a point of vulnerability in current processes, both as to inefficiencies, inaccuracies, and most importantly fraudulent behaviors by humans that may compromise a transaction. Moreover, because many entities may be involved in the secondary events necessary to the directed event, any one of them may be responsible for the occurrence of an event necessary to the directed event, and consequently any one or more of those entities may be holding up the process for completing the directed event on account of the non-occurrence of one or more secondary events. Identifying what events remain uncompleted at any point in the process is critical to quickly identify where the transaction is being held up, and to making a determination about when or how the issue may be resolved. In many instances, a human analyst is required to monitor the completion of secondary events in a series of secondary events, and manually execute subsequent secondary events in the series before the directed event may actually take place. This often requires a user to repetitively access the various platforms of entities involved, review the status of a particular step or event that needs to take place for the transaction to continue in its progression, and in some instances, take additional steps to either urge the entity to complete a given secondary event, or find another entity (or another account held by such entity) that can substitute in and complete a substitute secondary event sufficient to support the directed event.
No current solution exists to effectively address the foregoing problems in a holistic manner that is secure and efficient. Furthermore, because so much of transactional business takes place in connection with various disparate internet platforms (e.g., banking platforms, underwriting platforms, etc.), several internet-centric problems have arisen that, to date, no integrated solution has been able to resolve. The present disclosure includes technology directed toward resolving many of the foregoing issues present in conventional systems and procedures.